Nature and Nurture
by Emerald Embers
Summary: Above all things, a demon has to keep himself occupied. Alastair/Castiel, Castiel/Dean


It had been a long time coming.

Alastair was fighting for the end. Always had been - at least, as long as he could remember. He'd never really cared whose side he was on, had only chosen Lucifer for the efficiency. Heaven had always been so vague about targets; he'd been training recruits for this age from the moment he told his tormentors while he was still on the rack exactly what they'd been doing wrong.

He had interrogation down to an art form and now he'd been captured by rank amateurs, inexperienced zealots who were pure enough to be incapable of true torture of flesh and bone, but too impure to burn him with their light as an archangel could.

Caught between the two angels, one choosing to refer to himself as a specialist even if by Hell's standards his techniques were laughable, Alastair knew full well he was likely to be stuck in this rotting suit for a while yet. Something had to be done to pass the time, and after that little display with the crowbar Alastair owed Dean a favour; there were few measures as effective and objectively entertaining as breaking someone else's toys. It didn't take much effort to notice Dean had an unconscious fondness for the quieter angel.

.

It wasn't so much a matter of getting under Castiel's skin as it was of working out what already lay there and stirring it into action. Any of their kind who were not yet Fallen had so much potential after spending enough time on Earth for its ideas to infect them. He'd watched from Hell's depths before; normally it took decades, even centuries before the constant slip-slide of sex and violence planted seeds to be worked with - but then, most decades hadn't held the first tentative breaths of an apocalypse, and most angelic garrisons weren't foolish enough to put a watcher on the front line.

He knew Castiel's type well; had met Fallen, demon and human alike who followed the same basic pattern. These would always watch, and when they could not watch, they listened. The attentiveness was invariably their undoing.

Castiel hadn't taken his eyes off Alastair for a second, and Alastair had no qualms about returning the favour.

.

Uriel had worn flesh and blood before, that much was obvious. He carried the weight of skin and bone comfortably, perhaps even to a greater degree than Alastair himself. Unlike the angels, who had been there at the start of all things, there had been a mother and a father and flesh of his own once, but all those had long, long since rotted, been crushed into fragments of bone and history. The path to becoming Hell's high inquisitor had removed any need for a body, and had he not required one to break the seals he would not have taken another. Messy things, bodies.

Uriel punched with an inelegant but nonetheless steady rhythm that split skin and cracked bone, made the human within beg, again, for death. Reassuring, really, that sort of reliability. Alastair ignored his questions, a little insulted the angel would even ask - but then, low level purifiers had always been brutes. Alastair had _embraced_ worse than this, let alone endured.

"Tired, yet?" He asked as Uriel turned his back, spitting blood over the suit jacket with petty amusement, but it was clear that the angel had decided he was above rising to a demon's sense of humour.

"It knows something but will not talk," Uriel said, voice tight with forced control. "I will seek revelation." And then faint, under his breath but audible to any supernatural being worth discussing, "And wash that maggot-ridden blood from my hands."

Castiel nodded, made to leave with Uriel before the other angel stopped him, pointing to the cloth and bowl of water set on an unfortunate-looking metal trolley. "Clean him up," Uriel ordered, as if the non-verbal instruction had not been explicit enough, and Castiel seemed to consider arguing the point before nodding again in agreement and waiting for Uriel's exit.

Seeds of dissent already; should have figured Dean Winchester would be that sort of influence. He had been one of Alastair's finest students after all, and his boy had a delicious knack for attracting the worst sort of torment to anyone he thought to care about.

.

The silence between them stretched out, broken only as Castiel dipped the cloth in water, wringing it damp before walking over. "Do you expect me to talk?" Alastair asked, smirking. "Or do you expect me to die?"

"We will do whatever we deem necessary."

"Ah, a non-answer from an angel. How unexpected."

Castiel's eyes remained deceptively calm as he brought the cloth up to Alastair's chest, forcing an intake of breath at the burn of blessed water. There seemed little point in silencing his hisses as blood was wiped from collar and neck, though Castiel hesitated for a moment at the jawline.

"A flinch?" Alastair asked, enjoying Castiel's obvious discomfort and licking his lips as he felt soft fingertips lent unnatural strength by their possessor grip his jaw before Castiel saw to wiping the crusted blood and spit from his chin.

"Yes." Strangely, Castiel hesitated whenever the hand gripping the cloth accidentally brushed against bare skin; incongruous with his ignorance of the concept of personal space.

"They're sending you in young, hm? I know what you think, all angels made at the same time, blah blah blah - but being up here? Or, ah ha, down?" He grinned then, reopening the split on his lip. "All that blood-rich soil ages you."

Castiel's eyes focused on the fresh mess pouring from the split on Alastair's lip, his hand still hesitant to mop up the results. "I am not as na ve as you assume."

"A soldier who flinches in the face of violence? Pray tell, what should I assume?" It was difficult to fight down the urge to grin again, and the scent of sweat in the air barely helped. Castiel was nervous and had yet to learn how to suppress its physical manifestation; his superiors hadn't sent him in na ve, they'd sent him in naked. "Dean could teach you a thing or two about bleeding a demon with a straight face."

"Because you broke him?" Castiel replied. "I will not compound the damage." The words were surprisingly bitter, and Alastair cocked his head to the left.

"I didn't break Dean to spite you. I did it because it's my job. Because it's fun. And because it had to be him." He tongued the split for a moment, thinking back; the memories were still recent, still fond. "You should have seen our boy with a knife. Makings of an artist in that one."

"You warped his nature."

"I took what was already there," Alastair pointed out, feeling something clicking into place but not quite fitting yet. "Do you think you know him just because -" And there - just a tightening, just the slightest change in tension around the angel's eyes, and he knew. "You think you can fix him."

"In the Lord's hands -"

"No," Alastair interrupted. This was too beautiful, too priceless to let go. "Not His hands, not His plan. You. You want to put those broken pieces back together."

"Dean will heal," Castiel replied with all the righteous certainty his kind could afford.

"Dean was damaged goods long before I got my pristine little mitts on him. You can't fix this with duct tape and superglue." Castiel's fists clenched; the barbs were hitting. "What did you honestly think you could do? Hug it out? Kiss it better with that pretty suit's lips?"

"There is still beauty out there," Castiel argued. "Still decency worth fighting for."

"Not in Dean's line of work. How far _has_ Earth got into you, hm?"

Castiel tensed, sweat visible now on his brow, in the hollow of his neck, and Alastair had to repress a gleeful laugh. The healing power of an angel's love - it was so ridiculous, so over the top and clich that only a world as insane as this could have borne witness to it. Breaking Castiel was no task; Dean had done nearly all the work already and not even realised it. "He is not beyond repair," Castiel insisted, and Alastair delighted in the taint of guilt in the angel's tone, guilt at the possibility of being wrong. If there was one thing Alastair loved more than sin, guilt would be it; capable of twisting the purest of intentions into something horrific, the one evil huge enough to destroy without even being aware of what it was destroying.

"Of course," Alastair taunted. "And how do you suppose Dean will return the favour? Fighting for the side who left him in Hell for forty years and let his family tear itself apart? Or maybe something fleshier, maybe raping the vessel you're wearing will do the -" Cut off; hard to speak when your jaw had been knocked out of joint by an angel's fist.

Castiel eyed the blood smeared across his hand for a long moment as if surprised by it before grimacing and wiping it off on the same cloth he had used to clean Alastair's skin. "Your filth will not corrupt our intentions, demon," Castiel spat.

"If you think they need corrupting," Alastair replied, pleasantly. "You search for your answers. We'll see how long purity holds out."

.

Alastair said nothing when Uriel returned; it was enough just to watch the fall out as he looked at the blood on Castiel's hands. Anger; retribution; and an underlying truth Castiel did not wish to admit to.

Dean Winchester was more than Castiel's weakness.

Dean Winchester was the reason Castiel was going to Fall.

Alastair wanted to watch every last minute.

.

The End


End file.
